According to a study conducted by researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, smoking rates are likely to go down drastically due to increase in cigarette tax.
With the increase in cigarette tax, researchers are sure than more than light smokers, it's the hard-core smokers that are going to be affected by this rise in price and they are most likely to cut down on the number of cigarettes they smoke in a day.
"Most clinicians and researchers thought these very heavy smokers would be the most resistant to price increases," said first author Patricia A. Cavazos-Rehg, PhD. "Many believed this group was destined to continue smoking heavily forever, but our study points out that, in fact, change can occur. And that's very good news."
Looking into subset of data from a larger study that was previously conducted on the prevalence of alcohol and drug use, researchers found interesting study material on 7,068 smokers which noted data on how much each of them smoked. Cavazos-Rehg, a research assistant professor of psychiatry, and her team went about asking the same smokers the same question about how much they smoked in a day.
"On average, everyone was smoking a little less," said Cavazos-Rehg. "But when we factored in price changes from tax increases, we found that the heaviest smokers responded to price increases by cutting back the most."
It was found that when the study was initially conducted in 2001, people smoked an average of 16 cigarettes a day with the price of each pack being $3.96. This number reduced to 14 cigarettes a day in 2004 when the price of a pack of cigarettes went up to $4.41. The most significant reason for this rise in price was because of rise in tax.
Other reasons why these smokers cut down on the number of cigarettes were also looked into but none were as influential as the price factor.
"Other research has shown, for example, that smoke-free indoor air policies can reduce the number of cigarettes that people smoke," said Cavazos-Rehg. "But our study didn't find that. There weren't a lot of changes in indoor smoking policies during the time period in which these surveys were conducted. So we can't say those policies don't help reduce smoking. It's just that we didn't find they had a big impact in our results."
The study was published in the journal Tobacco Control.
